[SOLVED] PC unstable, freezing, unknown cause

No worries SoC voltage is “safe enough” up to 1.2V, I’ll never go over.
In many of my testings I never touched the LLC for anything.

I also kinda suspect my RAM the most, hence why I messed with it the most and reduced the speed of it from 3200 to 3066 for what I thought was stable. I’m reducing it more if the voltage doesn’t help enough, I tried 2866 and 2800 too just not long enough maybe.
The RAM itself should be fine, as it ran for about 3 years on XMP spec in my old TR system.

I have cleared CMOS about 5 times for all my testing which included just running XMP settings and leaving everything else untouched. That was unstable.

I will try JEDEC specs again if the voltage and speed reductions won’t do it.
Though before that happens I may just buy some other RAM just to test the waters more.

As for the fan, I’ll check if I can borrow one from someone.

Soo seems I made an interesting observation:
More RAM voltage: Longer operating time before freeze, but more memory errors.
Less RAM voltage: Shorter operating time before freeze, but less memory errors.

How does that make sense at all?

there shouldn’t be any memory errors at all… 1st thing to try is what settings make it work 100% free of errors. check with other / or less RAM sticks. And get proper cooling, at least with some crappy room ventilator or desk fan blowing into the case to get this problem cause eliminated or verified!

So I downclocked the memory and voltage further now 2866 and 1.28V and let it run to 2000% which took already an enormous amount of time but this time there are no errors at least. I will report on the freezing if and when it happens. As a next step though I will try to get a room ventilator asap.

I would suggest to try just run the memory at 3200mhz with the standard infinity fabric speed of 1600mhz to match that and of course just 1.35V vmem.

If that does not work out well, then i would try 2933mhz.

Keep in mind that Buildzoid is using a Ryzen system, which is a dual channel system.
Threadripper is quad channel that is a significant difference.
Because the mem clocks you are able to achieve and the timings,
are really depended on many factors, memory modeles (single / dual rank), cpu, board etc.

Tried that 3 times (in different intervals for sanity checking), it’s giving me memory errors at about ~10%.

And what about if you run the memory modules without xmp profile?
But just stock jedec speed?
Of course this will tank performance on the infinity fabric drastically.
But just for a test to figure out, if not one of the memory modules might cause the cull prit maybe?
Or in case of a temperature issue, that should shine some light on it then i guess.

I mean if you still have issues on jedec speeds, then i suppose there might be a module issue.
Or maybe you have the worst cpu ever.

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I tried that once, but haven’t checked enough. since it takes so much time if there are no memory errors happening but freezing may still happen.

For now I’ll try my settings I landed on now on 2866 with no memory erros even to 2000% and see what happens, if that works great, if not then I will go further with the suggestions made here of course.

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Well the last thing i could possibly thinking off might be the motherboard.
But yeah, that is kinda difficult to test without spending allot of money.
And if the issue isn’t fully isolated to that part yet.
Because it’s still strange that it does complete renders without issues when you are just at the system doing other things as well.

Oh I changed the title actually because at some point in my testing it did freeze up now (when I decreased the Voltage more but leaving frequency alone) even when I was on the PC and doing stuff. That way I actually could follow what was happening:

  • The first thing that happens: whatever I click on doesn’t happen anymore, clicking on it again does nothing.
  • Encoding task stops
  • The second thing is that the start menu doesn’t open anymore
  • I can’t close anything anymore nor resize anything anymore
  • Some programs like HWInfo64 still run and report correctly
  • Wallpaper Engine freezes
  • Sound is the last thing that freezes
  • Total freeze up, nothing works anymore

The only difference that I made until now in my testing is what I outlined in my post about the observation I made:

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Yeah this is really a difficult one.

If it was me personally i would pick up a new memory kit and try that firstly really.
Because the unstable memory seems to be the only factor that always seem to come back here.

Yes it is and in my 9 years of being in the IT business I never encountered something like it, hence my cry for help :stuck_out_tongue:.

I think I may actually get a new memory kit with different ICs than Samsung B-die before I’m going horribly crazy.

Micron-E die maybe?

I believe Buildzoid also talks often about those being cheap and good.

Probably going with that yes, they were in talks sometimes though as being heat sensitive but Buildzoid took a hairdryer to one and gave it 70°C on a good OC and it didn’t spew a memory error.
If that still has the same issues in my system I’ll try another one that is hopefully Hynix CJR and if that also spews the same things I know it’s not the memory.

Welp, it froze again, this time while actually being idle for a longer time (4H+) and temps being at the low 60s.
That may be a point for it not being the RAM nor heat or am I wrong about that?

EDIT:
Holy c**p, on 2666 and 1.28V it froze after about 2H of operating time.
This time it froze while HCI Memtest was running, no errors popped up while it was running. Does that mean it’s something different than RAM?
I’m now down to 2400 JEDEC.

2400 JEDEC 1.2V also froze. Oh and FCLK was 1:1 for this.
For now I’m trying a different drive with an OS that didn’t get a memory crash yet, maybe the OS is borked.

Update time:

After I kinda gave up on my RAM I got a new one: 3600 1.35V Micron E-die
So far so good.

  • In the first night it completed HCI Memtest without erros to 1500%.
  • On the second night running it again to 2000% it finished without errors but when freeing up the RAM again from Memtest use it froze again.

Can that simply happen or this again an indicator of something being wrong?
Sadly the new RAM kit doesn’t have temperature sensors.

In regards to mem test, there always can go something wrong.
It kinda sorta is a memory torture test afterall.
Of course idk what you settings are, but if you run everyting in spec,
like it should, 3600mhz 1.35V and with 1800mhz infinity fabric.
Then that should basically be fine.

I would do some render tests for testing now.

Update time:
After much testing I think it’s finally stable.
I got bored after about ~4d continuous testing and never restarting, yay!, I think I declare it stable now…

Thank you all for the suggestions.

It was the RAM in the end, it seems the old one was kinda bad even before the transfer to my STRX4 socket system but it doesn’t show up when it’s under cooler conditions.

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